Abstract Background Public sector health care providers in rural Guatemala have infrequently offered family planning information and services in routine visits. This operations research project tested a strategy to modify certain practices that prevent health workers from proactively screening clients' needs and meeting them. Methods The research design was quasi-experimental with a pretest-posttest-follow-up comparison group design. Health districts, which comprise health centers and posts, were purposively assigned to intervention or comparison groups to assure comparability of the two groups. The strategy was based on a job-aid designed to guide health workers in screening clients' reproductive intentions and family planning needs, help them to offer contraceptive methods if the woman expressed interest, and facilitate the provision of the method chosen at the time of the visit. The strategy was implemented at intervention sites during a period of six months. Upon completion of post-intervention measurements, the strategy was scaled up to the comparison sites, and a follow-up assessment was conducted nine months later. Results were evaluated by conducting three rounds of exit interviews with women exposed to the risk of unwanted pregnancy. Results Study results showed a two to five-fold increase in providers' screening of clients' reproductive intentions. The proportion of clients who received information about contraceptives increased from 8% at the baseline to 42% immediately post-intervention, and 36% at the follow-up survey. The intervention also proved successful in improving the role service providers play in offering women a chance to ask questions and assisting women in making a selection. The proportion of women who received a method, referral or appointment increased and remained high in the intervention group, although no change was seen in the comparison group after their participation in the strategy. Conclusion The easy-to-use job aid developed for this project proved useful for screening clients' needs and reducing providers' reluctance to discuss family planning with clients and offer contraceptive services. Such family planning screening devices can be useful in traditional settings where both providers and clients shy away from discussing family planning issues.

Abstract Background Chemerin, encoded by the retinoic acid receptor responder 2 (RARRES2) gene is an adipocytesecreted protein with autocrine/paracrine functions in adipose tissue, metabolism and inflammation with a recently described function in vascular tone regulation, liver, steatosis, etc. This molecule is believed to represent a critical endocrine signal linking obesity to diabetes. There are no data available regarding evolution of RARRES2 in non-human primates and great apes. Expression profile and orthology in RARRES2 genes are unknown aspects in the biology of this multigene family in primates. Thus; we attempt to describe expression profile and phylogenetic relationship as complementary knowledge in the function of this gene in primates. To do that, we performed A RT-PCR from different tissues obtained during necropsies. Also we tested the hypotheses of positive evolution, purifying selection, and neutrality. And finally a phylogenetic analysis was made between primates RARRES2 protein. Results RARRES2 transcripts were present in liver, lung, adipose tissue, ovary, pancreas, heart, hypothalamus and pituitary tissues. Expression in kidney and leukocytes were not detectable in either species. It was determined that the studied genes are orthologous. Conclusions RARRES2 evolution fits the hypothesis of purifying selection. Expression profiles of the RARRES2 gene are similar in baboons and chimpanzees and are also phylogenetically related.

In this article, we present several modifications to the Test of Understanding Graphs in Kinematics. The most significant changes are (i) the addition and removal of items to achieve parallelism in the objectives (dimensions) of the test, thus allowing comparisons of students’ performance that were not possible with the original version, and (ii) changes to the distractors of some of the original items that represent the most frequent alternative conceptions. The final modified version (after an iterative process involving four administrations of test variations over two years) was administered to 471 students of an introductory university physics course at a large private university in Mexico. When analyzing the final modified version of the test it was found that the added items satisfied the statistical tests of difficulty, discriminatory power, and reliability; also, that the great majority of the modified distractors were effective in terms of their frequency selection and discriminatory power; and, that the final modified version of the test satisfied the reliability and discriminatory power criteria as well as the original test. Here, we also show the use of the new version of the test, presenting a new analysis of students’ understanding not possible to do before with the original version of the test, specifically regarding the objectives and items that in the new version meet parallelisms. Finally, in the PhysPort project (physport.org), we present the final modified version of the test. It can be used by teachers and researchers to assess students’ understanding of graphs in kinematics, as well as their learning about them.

Abstract Epilepsy demands a major burden at global levels. Worldwide, about 1% of people suffer epilepsy and 30% of them (0.3%) are anticonvulsants resistant. Among them, some children epilepsies are peculiarly difficult to deal with as Doose syndrome (DS). Doose syndrome is a very complicated type of children cryptogenic refractory epilepsy (CCRE) which is traditionally studied by analysis of complex electrencephalograms (EEG) by neurologists. CCRE are affections which evolve in a course of many years and customarily, questions such as on which year was the kid healthiest (less seizures) and on which region of the brain (channel) the affection has been progressing more negatively are very difficult or even impossible to answer as a result of the quantity of EEG recorded through the patient’s life. These questions can now be answered by the application of entropies to massive information contained in many EEG. CCRE can not always be cured and have not been investigated from a mathematical viewpoint as far as we are concerned. In this work, a set of 80 time series (distributed equally in four yearly recorded EEG) is studied in order to support pediatrician neurologists to understand better the evolution of this syndrome in the long term. Our contribution is to support multichannel long term analysis of CCRE by observing simple entropy plots instead of studying long rolls of traditional EEG graphs. A comparative analysis among aproximate entropy, sample entropy, our versions of multiscale entropy (MSE) and composite multiscale entropy revealed that our refined MSE was the most convenient complexity measure to describe DS. Additionally, a new entropy parameter is proposed and is referred to as bivariate MSE (BMSE). Such BMSE will provide graphical information in much longer term than MSE.

The role of facilitators in distance learning environments is of substantial importance in supporting the learning process. This article specifically discusses the role of the facilitator in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), which are characterized by their stimulation of learning connections. The study analyzes the experiences of 135 facilitators in hybrid courses (cMOOC + xMOOC) where the following are explored: (1) the strategies used by the facilitators to encourage learning connections, (2) the challenges they faced in their activities, and (3) the basic skills required. A mixed method was used with a convergent design, through the application of a questionnaire qualitative and quantitative data were collected simultaneously. It was found that the collaborative construction of knowledge is the most widely used strategy to promote learning connections in MOOCs and that its design is the biggest challenge that facilitators faced while carrying out their activities.

Abstract The use of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems has attracted considerable attention due to capacity and performance improvements without increasing the required bandwidth or transmission power. Although MIMO improves the transmission rate and provides reliable communication, these advantages come at a high cost, since multiple radio frequency (RF) chains have to be employed. Therefore, cost-effective implementation of MIMO systems remains as an important challenge. In this sense, antenna selection techniques (AST) can help reduce the high cost of MIMO systems, while retaining most of their benefits; and in order to improve channel capacity, transmission power can be allocated efficiently according to the channel experienced by each antenna element. In this paper, we show the channel capacity improvement of MIMO systems, by combining the use of AST and transmission power allocation through the water-pouring algorithm (WPA) for different antenna configurations. We apply WPA and allocate more power to the channel with better conditions, when the MIMO channel is Rayleigh distributed and noise is Gaussian. By employing these two techniques (AST and WPA), we show that channel capacity is significantly improved, with higher capacity values than those obtained using traditional systems which just spread equal power among all the transmit antennas. We also show that bounds on the capacity can be considered when these improvements are used in a MIMO system.

In theory, identification of material properties of microscopic materials, such as thin film or single crystal, could be carried out with physical experimentation followed by simulation and optimization to fit the simulation result to the experimental data. However, the optimization with a number of finite element simulations tends to be computationally expensive. This paper proposes an identification methodology based on nanoindentation that aims at achieving a small number of finite element simulations. The methodology is based on the construction of a surrogate model using artificial neural-networks. A sampling scheme is proposed to improve the quality of the surrogate model. In addition, the differential evolution algorithm is applied to identify the material parameters that match the surrogate model with the experimental data. The proposed methodology is demonstrated with the nanoindentation of an aluminum matrix in a die cast aluminum alloy. The result indicates that the methodology has good computational efficiency and accuracy.

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